Mother Angelina’s kind, concerned face and the pinched lines around her lips.
“Sit down, my child.” Papers rustled on the small wooden desk. “I have just received a letter from your father. A special messenger brought it all the way from Madrid.”
“He—my uncle the monsignor has talked to him then? He’s consented?”
As usual, her eagerness had carried her too far forward, and she subsided into her chair, sitting very straight as she had been taught, trying to control her excitement under the shadow of the reverend mother’s frown.
The frown she was used to, but the sigh that suddenly escaped Mother Angelina’s lips made her wary.
“I’m afraid—you have to understand that God tests us in many ways. Your father—”
Marisa had not been able to prevent herself from interrupting.
“But I do not understand! Surely my father can have no objection to my becoming a nun? Why should he? If my uncle has talked to him—”
Oh, but it had been such a shocking, unpleasant interview! Mother Angelina, as upset in her own way as Marisa was, had taken refuge in unusual sternness, reminding her of the vows of obedience she had been willing to take.
Nothing could mitigate the shock of the contents of her father’s letter. For some time, Marisa could not bring herself to believe that she had heard correctly.
“Married? He—he has arranged a marriage for me with some man I have not even seen? Oh no. It cannot be true! I don’t wish to be married. I will not be married! I only want to become a nun, just like you. I don’t—”
Her defiant outburst had only brought what she thought of as “the sad look” to the reverend mother’s face; and after several stern admonishments Marisa had been sent out here, to her favorite place, to consider her “duty.”
Duty! It was too much to ask of her. To be married. Why couldn’t she have been allowed to find peace in a convent?
The thought of marriage and everything it entailed brought all the nightmares back. That night in Paris, during the height of the “Terror” as people were beginning to call it. Fleeing through the darkness, being only half-awake and trying to make believe that it was all an unpleasant dream—and then, suddenly, the flaring torchlights and the shouts and ribald laughter.
“Well, well! And what’s all this? Some more Aristos trying to escape Madame Guillotine? Who are you, eh?”
One man, saner than the rest, or perhaps, only a little less drunk, had laughed contemptuously.
“Have done, citizens! Can’t you see they’re only a scared band of gypsies? Hey, you—why don’t you show us some of your juggling tricks? Perhaps you’ll tell our fortunes—”
“Fortunes, pah! There’s a likely-looking wench there, with golden skin. Perhaps we should tell her fortune. What do you say, citizens?”
And she remembered Delphine, the woman who had taken care of her since she was a baby, thrusting herself forward, pushing Marisa away from her as she did. “You want your fortune told, handsome gentlemen? My mother is too old and sick in her head, you understand? And you have frightened my little brother with your shouting. But me, I’ll tell all your fortunes for a few sous. We are poor, hungry people. No one has any money these days, and that is why we’re on our way back to Spain….”
After that—no, she did not want to think of what had happened after that! At the time she had not understood. She knew only that the laughter and ribald talk of the men had turned into something else, and suddenly Delphine was screaming, screaming for them to go, to run away, even while they were ripping at her clothes, pushing her down onto the dirty cobblestones. Screaming—and suddenly, there was blood everywhere, and the men, caught up by their own animal instincts, were all clustered around the prostrate form of the woman they were using so callously, like the beasts they were. And Sor Angelina, as she had been then, dressed like a gypsy herself, had forcibly pulled Marisa away, making her run, run very fast, not stopping even when she stumbled and almost fell.
“Delphine sacrificed herself for you, child. For all of us. Would you have wanted her sacrifice to be for nothing?”
Told that over and over, she had tried to accept it. Dressed as a boy for her own safety during the long months that followed, she had tried to feel herself as nothing more than a ragged gypsy urchin. No, she did not want to be a woman—never, never to be used and torn to pieces that way. Perhaps maman was better off going to the guillotine with her other gay, brave friends, dying quickly and cleanly under the knife. Poor, weak maman, who loved the gaiety of Paris and had so many gallant admirers she had almost forgotten her daughter, tucked safely away in a convent, with only Delphine remembering to visit every week.
The first upheaval in Marisa’s life had been her removal from Martinique, where she had lived with maman’s family while her father was in Cuba. He had sent for them to join him, and Marisa could still remember how her mother had cried, complaining petulantly, “It was bad enough when he dragged me away to Louisiana—I lost two children there, you remember? The heat, the swamps and the loneliness, and the fever! And now it is Cuba. Cuba! No—I won’t go! He promised me Spain, and Paris—why shouldn’t I visit our relatives there? Everyone is there—even Marie-Josephe de Pagerie, who swore she would never leave Martinique. I must see Paris just once, at least, or I will stifle and die!”
Paris had been bleak and cold and wet. And Marisa had cried for days on end, longing for her old home and her handsome golden-haired papa, who had always made such a pet of her when he was home. Paris was not home—she hated the convent to which she had been sent to learn to be a lady. And she hardly ever saw maman any longer—it would all have been too much to bear if it had not been for Delphine.
Why hadn’t papa come after them? Why had he waited so long to acknowledge her existence?
“Your father was naturally upset when your mother ran off with you that way. And then, for so many months, he believed you were dead—killed, like so many others during the Terror. Child! You must try to understand that your father is doing what he believes best for you. He loves you—”
“If he really loved me, he would have taken the trouble to try and find me before. He would let me become a nun, as I wish to be.” Recklessly, in spite of Mother Angelina’s reproachful look, she cried out, “He doesn’t wish to be bothered with me any longer. Perhaps everything maman used to say was true, after all. She said he didn’t want her after a while, because she didn’t give him a son. She used to cry all the time because of the other women he had, even slaves. She said he had an octoroon mistress he loved better than her—”
Her almost hysterical outburst checked, Marisa had been dismissed. But even now, in spite of all her efforts, she found that she could not check her own wild, resentful thoughts.
Why couldn’t she have been born a boy? Why a female—slave forever to a man’s whims? Ah, for the freedom of those runaway days with the gypsies when she had been dressed as a boy and felt as free as a boy. In retrospect, the vagrant, vagabond life didn’t seem too unpleasant at all. She had learned to ride astride and to run barefoot over the hardest ground, and even to pick pockets without being caught. A whole year of freedom—and then another convent. But after a while, the atmosphere of peace and tranquillity had dissolved some of the tension in her thin, highly-strung body, and the nightmares from which she would wake, screaming, had grown less and less frequent. Marisa, the little gypsy rebel had changed into Marisa the postulant,
